Did you know you have a 1 in 3 probability of getting a criminal record? One-third of yours and one-third of my family members face arrest and sentencing without the protection of our Constitution. This devastating and horrifying rate brings tears and fear to Americans. Sadly, your Constitutional Sixth Amendment rights to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury with witnesses and legal counsel were unilaterally taken from us by the government in 97% of state and federal criminal cases. No Federal, State, or County Legislator has taken action to restore your rights. Read the Sixth Amendment here to see all you’ve lost. The days of the Law and Order TV show with the proof presented to a jury of your peers and witnesses in your defense are gone. Former President John Adams, a key Founder of our Constitution, said, “Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty.” Today, our hearts and lungs are being ripped away.
FOR THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THIS REPORT, CLICK HERE.
The United States has the largest prison and jail population of over two million people – more than other nations, including nations with similar crime rates. We have 20% of the world’s prison population, yet only 4% of the world’s population. Here you see the United States incarcerates our people five times that of NATO countries. America, “the former land of free,” leads all Communists, Islamic, Dictatorships, and other countries in incarcerating its people. We are passed the point where more Americans have a criminal record than a college degree.
Your right to trial is near extinction because Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) unilaterally replaced your Constitutional right to a trial by jury with a government-created system of guilty plea bargaining and Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Guidelines. If you were carrying or used a firearm, the Guidelines add five years to your prison sentence and an additional 25 years for each subsequent firearms offense, even if the firearm was for self-defense. A summary of some of the most devastating abuse of power facts is provided below.
Now, Prosecutors have all the power; Judges are powerless messengers of the mandatory imprisonment time; and the judiciary and public are cut off from oversight in plea deals. The virtual elimination of the option of taking a case to trial has so thoroughly tipped the scales of justice against the accused that the danger of government overreach is ever-present.
The DOJ frequently pushes Congress and the Sentencing Commission for higher and higher penalties, further evidence of a strong DOJ desire to enhance its power to add more Americans to the prison population. Rather than dealing with the cost and Constitutional compliance of speedy and public trials with an impartial jury, DOJ, Federal, and State governments are forcing us to pay the cost to house, feed and guard 97% of Americans involved in criminal cases, irrespective of their guilt or innocence and their Constitutional rights.
Here are more facts that show the wide range of our lost liberty as reported by NACDL and Dataprot.net. Some of these statistics were compiled before America had open borders and overwhelming fewer illegals in the United States. We believe these figures will substantially grow with mandates prosecutions, political/domestic terrorist prosecutions, and other new cases following the precedents set by these new cases.
- You have a 1 in 3 probability of getting a criminal record.
- Sentencing power unfairly shifted from judges to prosecutors.
- America has the largest prison and jail population in the world. America has 20% of the world’s prison population, yet only 4% of the world’s population.
- America, “the former land of free,” significantly leads all Communists, Islamic, Dictatorships, and other countries in incarcerating its people.
- In 97% of cases, our government took the citizen’s Constitutional rights to a speedy and public trial, impartial jury, witnesses, and legal counsel for trial.
- Holding hands, Americans with arrest records could circle the earth three times.
- More Americans have a criminal record than a college degree.
- 6 out of 10 Americans in State Prisons are brown or black.
- 6 out of 10 Americans in Federal Prisons are white.
- There were more than 7.6 million arrests in the US in 2020 alone.
- FBI reported arrests for 2020 are 32% aged 26 to 35, 73% male, 27% female, 68% white, 27% black, 5% other or unknown races.
- African Americans convicted of murder are 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers.
- Inadmissible and illegally obtained material can be used, and real evidence can be withheld in grand jury indictments.
- Rights enumerated by Constitution’s Sixth Amendment near extinction.
- Numerous scholars have examined plea bargaining and estimate up to 27% of Americans that plead guilty may factually be innocent.
- When you turn down a guilty plea deal, you are penalized by an average of 3.3 times longer prison sentence if you opt for a trial.
- Most crimes reported to the police go unsolved.
- Over 5 million Americans were forbidden from voting in 2020 due to a felony conviction.
Our condensed report is based on the 78-page report issued by the prestigious 40,000-member strong National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) “Sixth Amendment Right to Trial on the Verge of Extinction and How to Save It”. NACDL, the preeminent organization of criminal defense lawyers, is just blocked from the US Congress in Washington, DC, and has presented numerous briefings to the press and Legislators.
You can no longer rely on the protection of the Constitution, the judicial system, or Congress for fair, rational, and humane treatment within the criminal justice process. Congress, DOJ, and all others with authority have failed to heed the NACDL warnings and recommendations to save our Sixth Amendment. It’s up to each of you to protect yourselves and your family, share this information, and demand corrective action to protect your family.
Educate Yourself and Prepare Your Family:
- Watch the NACDL video “The Vanishing Trial” (requires input of public library card or university login) and watch NACDL Panel Discussions and Briefings, available online to educate the public, such as this one on Facebook;
- Review other online sources of information, such as the Executive Summary and the full NACDL report;
- Protect your assets from being frozen in the event of an arrest.
Take Action:
- Sound the alarm to your family to prepare and post this Executive Summary on your social media.
- Demand county, state, and federal appointed and elected officials take immediate action to save your family. See a sample request for government action here.
- Contact tv and radio shows and news websites you follow to suggest they help prepare and educate Americans to face imprisonment with unfair Plea Bargaining outside Constitution Amendment Six protection, Mandatory Sentencing Guidelines without oversight, and prosecutor indictments lacking proof and oversight. Share the Executive Summary and this website link with them;
- Contact your Federal, State, and County legislators to demand emergency measures to place an immediate pause on 1) judicial actions to imprison citizens without our right to trial, 2) forced, unfair plea bargaining, 3) plea bargaining without oversight, and 4) all plea bargaining and judicial actions not in compliance with the Sixth Amendment. Request these legislators take immediate action to act on NACDL recommendations on the existing Mandatory Sentencing Guidelines, Plea Bargaining, and oversight to follow the overall spirit of the Constitution and, specifically, the Sixth Amendment;
- Contact your Federal, State, and County legislators to stop court indictments lacking proof and oversight of prosecutors and strictly prohibit illegally obtained evidence and inadmissible information in indictments. Share this NACDL report and this website link with them.
Summary of some of the most devasting facts in the NACDL report:
No proof is needed. Most people and elected officials still believe some proof is needed to be indicted, but that is not the case. Recently, many politicians and the media stated grand juries need proof, but they are incorrect. We can be indicted anytime because NO proof is needed for a prosecutor to bring an indictment against any American. NACDL stated, “A grand jury presentation can consist entirely of information that would be inadmissible at trial. A prosecutor may knowingly use illegally-obtained evidence to obtain an indictment, and if she has evidence in her possession that substantially exculpates the target, she may withhold it from the grand jury. The presentation need only establish probable cause to believe” you committed the crime. And this is all “ex parte,” meaning no one is even there to question what the prosecutor says.
Plea Bargaining – The prosecutor has unsupervised full power, and Judge is powerless. 97% of us are intimidated and coerced to plead guilty in deals verbally offered by prosecutors. You are not told or shown what the evidence is and must waive our constitutional and appeal rights with an unwritten possibility of a reduced sentence offered by a prosecutor. Rights are waived on criminal statutes, police misconduct, and legality of a stop, search, seizure, or evidence. Government can engage in entrapment, use of undercover agents, and prolong investigations while you are imprisoned and waiting for higher and higher sentences. You can be held accountable for all actions of others involved in the case even though you did not profit from what others did. Your assets can be frozen where you cannot care for our family or pay for legal defense. You are forced to plead guilty or risk utter devastation for your family and the remainder of your life when choosing a trial instead of taking the guilty plea deal. Plea negotiations take place outside the purview of the court and can be an all-or-nothing one-time offer. The judiciary and public are cut off from exercising any oversight. The result is that prosecutors possess nearly unchecked discretion and power to threaten citizens in plea negotiations. The prosecutors’ bargaining power to secure and force guilty pleas is overwhelming. The pressure each of us faces to plead guilty can cause innocent people to plead guilty.
Trial Penalty. Less than 3% of state and federal criminal cases receive jury trials. Although you have a Constitutional right to a trial, you are penalized by an average of 3.3 times longer prison sentence if you opt for a trial. When you turn down a guilty plea deal, you typically receive an inappropriate, harsher sentence at trial. Those who insist on their right to trial suffer consequences even more severely because too many prosecutors believe that once they have made a threat, they don’t need to lessen the threat, no matter how outrageous the threat is. Sentences are based on prosecutors’ decisions, and the Judge is powerless to change the mandatory sentences set by Congress. Today, the critical role that juries historically played has all but disappeared as plea bargaining has become the overwhelming norm.
Lack of Government Accountability and Civil Rights Fairness. As trials and hearings decline, so too does government accountability. The government’s capacity to process large caseloads without hearings or trials has resulted in an exponential increase in incarceration. Wreaking devastation in lives and communities and selectively concentrated among the poor and people of color, the nation’s mass incarceration has rightly been described as “the great unappreciated civil rights issue of our time.”
Lack of Community Oversight. The decline in jury trials deprives society of a vital community check on excesses of the criminal justice system. Juries determine whether the prosecutors have met their high burden of proof and apply their sense of fair play — frequently convicting of lesser-included offenses or even acquitting entirely where the prosecution is perceived as overreaching. They are a reminder that the government is not omnipotent but instead remains subject to the people’s will. As the U.S. criminal justice system churns some 11 million people through its courtroom doors every year, trial by jury actively engages the public in this critical process of democracy.
Acknowledgment and Appreciation to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
The gratitude and sincere appreciation of Americans nationwide are extended to the NACDL Leadership, Staff, and Trial Penalty Recommendation Task Force for their continuing dedication and work to save the U.S. Constitution Sixth Amendment. Their extensive publication of The Trial Penalty: Sixth Amendment Right to Trial on the Verge of Extinction and How to Save It” is a reference to the following We Can Be Heroes Foundation report. We are honored to designate The Trial Penalty Recommendation Task Force as National Heroes working for the good of all Americans, our country, and our future. Your dedication, American exceptionalism, passion, and steadfastness in bringing awareness to complicated, life-saving National issues is commended. May God Bless each NACDL member and your continuing work to restore the freedom guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Sincerely, Beth Heath, President, We Can Be Heroes Foundation.
For additional information:
Go to Executive Summary
Demand Your Constitution Freedom to Defend Yourself
